Friday, December 15, 2017

Jerusalem, y’-ru-sha-LA-yim, יְרוּשָׁלִָיִם

That area of Jerusalem called the City of David was settled in the 4th millennium BCE. In Biblical tradition King David conquered the city from the Jebusites, establishing it as the capital of the United Kingdom of Israel. His son, King Solomon, commissioned the building of the First Temple, events which took place at the dawn of the 1st millennium BCE. This is history. This is the history of Judaism as much as it is the history of the tribes of Israelites that came together to form a single ethnic, religious, social group.

The deliberately distorted history adopted by UNESCO under the influence of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the sanctimoniously entitled Palestinians claiming East Jerusalem which contains Judaism's most sacred relic, that of the site of the Temple of Solomon in its first and second incarnations, along with installations sacred to both Christians and Muslims, both of which followed Judaism long afterward, is safeguarded for all of humanity by the State of Israel. As steward of the Holy City, Jerusalem is also once again recognized as the capital of Israel.

When U.S. President Donald Trump fulfilled an election promise to have the United States formally recognize the reality that Jerusalem is in fact and purpose and in reflection of heritage and antiquity, the capital city of Israel, the enemies of the Jewish state which are by conviction anti-Semite Jew-loathers, were compelled to warn of the dangers inherent in the move, giving once again impetus to the virulence of Arab violent rejection of Israel, much less its reaction to the restoration of its capital.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, alongside Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the Ayatollahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran have revved their hysterical passions to overdrive in an effort to mobilize the 57-member OIC and the Arab League to come to the defense of the Palestinians who claim entitlement to Jerusalem -- and, for that matter to all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, minus Israel, to constitute the State of Palestine.

Jerusalem, Capital of Israel

Palestinians, fed a steady diet of propaganda of their obligation to 'resist the occupation' by employing lethal means to disrupt Israeli society and in the process become martyrs to be honoured and revered, answer the call to incitement they have been taught as their birthright. From the teen years upward isolated attacks with whatever comes to hand to kill and to maim, and with groups lobbing rocks at the police and military to demonstrate the extent of their defiance, there is no peace-loving entity for Israel to discuss peace with.

The Gaza-located terrorist Hamas Palestinians have called for mass protests, along with the governing PA's Fatah party, while leaving it to Islamic Jihad in Gaza to blast rockets over the border into Israel, forcing Israel to self-protectively shut down the border crossings where food and medical and building supplies are trucked into Gaza daily. A new Palestinian uprising against Israel has been called for in reaction to the Jerusalem announcement.

Turkey's emergency call for a conference of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation in Istanbul saw a handful of leaders of the 57 member-states present themselves. Hateful rhetoric, however, threats and slanders were, as usual, not in short supply. The Arab and Muslim leaders who see nothing particularly amiss in their roles urging their militaries to engage in sectarian bloodshed are themselves responsible for the deaths of immense numbers of Muslims. Yet they falsely accuse Israel of plotting genocide even as they themselves persecute religious and ethnic minorities.

In the five decades that have passed since the 1967 Six-Day War when once again and for the last time, assembled Arab armies failed to succeed in destroying Israel, Jerusalem has been administered by Israel. All the faiths whose sacred sites are located within Israel, from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, to the Western Wall and the Temple Mount, and the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque are safeguarded by Israel ensuring that those for whom those places are holy can access them in safety.

Only Israel alone, and Jews cannot have access to the most sacred of sites, the Temple Mount, to pray lest their doing so enrage Muslims who deny the pre-existence of Judaic places of worship on the Mount. To keep the peace, Israel must disallow Jews access to their most sacred of sites. Israel agreed to allow Jordan's Hashemite Monarchy to administer the Temple Mount through its ministry of religious affairs. An accommodation of great sacrifice which has never seen reciprocation but which has occasioned threats and accusations of Jewish presence on the Mount sullying and blaspheming a site sacred to Islam.

And from mosques all over the world, including in Jerusalem, Friday prayers include injunctions to the faithful to proceed directly from worship to take part in protests against the 'occupation' by Israel of Jerusalem. These are by no means peaceful, civil 'protests', but vehemently violent demonstrations of just how victimized the 1.2-billion Muslims in the world are by the presence of 14-million Jews in the world.

Israeli forces confront Palestinian protesters in Jerusalem's Old City on Friday